A Close Encounter with Jim Marrs & the Alien Agenda

Extract from Chapter 24 of The Journey Across Forever by Wayne Saalman

IT WAS IN THE LATE NINETIES, shortly after the author Jim Marrs released his phenomenal, meticulously documented, study of the whole UFO issue in a book entitled Alien Agenda that I had the privilege of meeting him — quite appropriately — in Aurora, Texas where an “airship” had once reportedly crashed. Indeed, this particular incident was actually cited in the Dallas Times Herald in 1897, so it is a tale that is more than mere hearsay. In fact, one of the occupants of that craft was said to be buried in the local cemetery in Aurora and Jim had included a photo of the headstone of the “pilot” of the craft in his book. The marker, unfortunately, was stolen (or ominously removed) sometime in the 1970s.

In any case, Jim (who was the very picture of sagely wisdom with his long white beard) and I had a deep and lively conversation that afternoon in one of the diners there and he had many a tale and insight for me. In turn, I told him of my own experiences, the most astonishing of which concerned a round, silver flying disk which flew just barely over the roof of our family home in the summer of 1963 in broad daylight with not a cloud in the sky. Jim found that fascinating but owing to his long years of research into the “Phenomenon”, he was not in the least surprised by this or any of my other revelations. After all, Alien Agenda is subtitled: “Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among us.”

That subtitle is a rather staggering statement all on its own.

Alien Agenda, by the way, has — according to Publishers Weekly — gone on to become the top selling book on UFOs in the world. (See Wikipedia for the complete details on Jim’s amazing career.) He appeared numerous times on TV, had multiple radio and video credits, and a host of other achievements. What’s more, Jim was such a powerful and credible figure in the often murky domain of this particular phenomenon that he was brought into the highly successful television series called Ancient Aliens in the opening episode. In that episode, the crashed airship mystery is explored in detail and includes some pretty astounding puzzlements, especially in regard to the subsequent health of the owner of the ranch where the craft was said to have crashed.

Jim’s book, Alien Agenda, was and continues to be a best-seller for one very important reason in my opinion: it goes beyond all other books in a certain area of the subject in quite a unique way. It not only relates all of the best-known UFO mysteries, from the most ancient of times to the present that have dazzled the general public for decades, but also includes a lengthy section on what is known as Remote Viewing.

Remote Viewing began as a military experiment in response to tales coming out of the USSR that the Soviet military was using “psychic spies” to covertly uncover many of the technological secrets of the West and to determine what the US and European leaders were up to logistically in a military sense and where exactly the Cold War was going. With atomic and hydrogen bombs mounted on huge numbers of ballistic missiles, this was no small deal. The fate of the world was very much in the balance.

As a result, the Western powers set to work on their own psychic programs, one of which came to be known as Remote Viewing. This is said to be the learned ability to transcend space-time in order to view people, places or objects at a great distance. To view in this way in military terms primarily serves as a way of perceiving enemy targets.

To make a long story short regarding Remote Viewing, this ability was assessed to be both valid and efficacious, but the strangest aspect of it was how virtually all of the Remote Viewers eventually perceived alien craft and entities in abundance. The details of those perceptions are expounded and expanded upon in startling elaborations in Alien Agenda. This, as mentioned earlier, is what sets Jim’s book apart from most others. It would appear that, as Jacques Vallee famously pointed out, these beings, who are apparently not of this earth, seem to be interdimensional in nature and inhabit a spectrum of reality which we humans can neither see nor measure with our current scientific instrumentation. In other words, these entities are said to reside within a parallel dimension from our material plane in what is known as an “overtone” and have the ability to make their presence visible or invisible in the proverbial blinking of an eye.

It is not just accounts about Remote Viewing that takes readers of Alien Agenda deeper into the phenomenon, but also the reports by respected psychics and trance channelers whose expositions very much seem to corroborate what has been revealed about these beings and their interests. What is particularly impressive is the consensus that there seems to be three main groups of extradimensional entities that are most connected to humanity. 1.) Humanoids 2.) Grays and 3.) Transcendentals.

For me, Jim (who died in 2017) was the perfect model for the archetypal Wise Old Man and the exchange that day proved both reassuring and rewarding. What he gave me was wonderful encouragement to continue with my literary pursuits and my own quest for truth no matter how strange and impenetrable that search might become.

“Above all,” he told me, “trust your own instincts and never give up. I know only too well how elusive truth is. In fact, it can often make no sense whatsoever, especially at those times when you wonder day and night if a thing is true or not, but with perseverance you can gain a perspective that will carry you far beyond where you are now and maybe even farther than you ever thought you would get in this life. If you do, quite frankly, the view can prove pretty damn stunning.”

(Note: There is much more about all of this in The Journey Across Forever and it is profoundly fascinating!)